


La Vagabonde

by tb_ll57



Series: Concept Variables [1]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Near Future, post - endless waltz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:33:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He lays there realising Quatre is holding his hand, and that it feels good.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Vagabonde

Quatre's the first through the door, stumbling over the jamb and giggling so hard about it that he stumbles again, and lands in a heap with the bag of apples spilling over his lap. A pretty blonde girl is behind him, scolding and smoking and stepping over him with no grace at all. In the space of seconds they're a shrieking pile on the rug.

Heero turns on a lamp.

'Oh,' the girl gasps. Quatre-- Quatre puts his hand at the small of his back, but releases it just as quickly. Heero never touches his own gun. He only nods.

The flush never quite left Quatre's face. But it regains the fun behind it, the spark in eyes that are somehow very blue even in the reflection of the lamplight. 'Hullo,' he says. 'You did come, then.'

'I did come.' He stands, slowly-- he needs the table for support, and Quatre sees, though he tries to hide it. 'Thank you for leaving the key.'

'Of course.' Quatre levers up, as well, and turns to help the girl. 'Here,' he adds, and tosses an apple, green and deadly accurate. Heero grabs it out of the air directly in front of his face.

Quatre laughs, delighted and bright. 'It's good to see you,' he says, simply and honestly.

 

**

 

'Your girlfriend is a terrible cook,' Heero tells him, picking small spots of burnt soot from his creamed chicken.

'Sister,' Quatre says, and Heero finds himself inexplicably relieved. 'Clara. But she isn't, actually. I cooked it.'

'Oh.' He hesitates, wiping his fingers off on his napkin. 'It-- isn't--'

'It's all right. I can hardly quibble with the truth.' Quatre scrapes a thick clot of cream to the edge of his plate. 'I thought it would be more like maths. There's certainly enough numbers involved. It seems straightforward, but something always goes horrifically wrong the second I touch the stove.'

The shredded chicken seems safe enough. A little chewy. 'You stayed here longer than I thought you would.'

'I like Paris.' Quatre refreshes their wine and sits back with the chipped crystal. 'People don't ask questions here. Parisians are quite polite, really, though they seem to lack a sense of humour. Which is all terribly funny, actually. There are days when I feel as though I never laughed until I came to Paris.'

'I'm not sure I understand.'

'You will, if you stay. Will you stay? Your emails were...' Quatre, also quite polite, doesn't finish his sentence. 'But I hope you'll have time to really rest. You look as though you need it.'

'Rest,' Heero repeats, uncertain about something-- maybe uncertain about the definition of that word. 'Here?'

'Here. At least through the night, please, if you won't stay longer. _Le dimanche, c'est horrible, c'est complètement mort, tout est fermé._ '

Heero's French is rusty. 'Tomorrow is Sunday?' he guesses.

'And it's a bore. Clara sleeps through the entire day just to avoid having to think of it. But we can go anywhere, do anything you like.' Quatre drinks his wine, but his eyes are on Heero, weighing, evaluating. 'Tell me you didn't walk the city with your ankle that swollen.'

'My boot holds it together,' he answers, in all seriousness.

'Heero.' Quatre's sigh has a tone of disappointment. 'Come on. Let's have a look at it.'

Quatre's bedroom is of far more interest than Quatre's medical examination. Heero lays back on a limp eiderdown duvet, reading the walls. Marks of black ink stencil up, down, sideways, even backwards, all in Quatre's hand, penned deep into the soft blue paint. It should be claustrophobic, chaotic, but it doesn't take long to tease out the pattern. Mathematical poetry, covering every inch of space, even the plaster ceiling. 'You don't sleep much,' he says.

'You think not?' Quatre asks absently. Heero's foot is propped in his lap, and Quatre is more gentle than Heero would have thought possible, plucking at the laces of Heero's boot.

'This is what the inside of your head looks like.'

Quatre pauses just as his fingers reach skin. His laugh is soft, barely a breath, but rich with affection. Heero's breath stops entirely, when Quatre eases off the boot. It hurts, but even through that, Quatre cradling his ankle is oddly sweet, and he feels heat in his face.

'Not broken,' Quatre says presently, gingerly rotating his foot. 'But twice the size it should be. I haven't any ice, but I've got a bag of frozen peas that should work nicely. What did you do to yourself?'

'I jumped off a roof.'

'Why, exactly?'

'I was chasing a man. He jumped, so I jumped.'

'Did you catch him, then?' Quatre rolls Heero's pantleg, tender with him. 'Or did he get away while you tried to test your bone density?'

'He died,' Heero says.

Quatre looks up. Heero only meets his eyes for a moment. The angle is wrong. 'What's this one?' he asks, touching an equation two feet above his head.

The thin mattress shifts and shivers. Quatre lays down with him, tight between him and the wall. Quatre's fingertips follow the path his made. 'It's called a proportional poem,' he murmurs. The touch of his shoulder to Heero's vibrates ever so slightly with his voice. _'Nothing, multiplied by Nowhere, divided by Never; added to Nobody, raised to the power of None.'_

'I don't understand.'

'It's poetry. Who ever really understands poetry?' Quatre points to the far wall, just beside the curtained window. 'That one is my current favourite. D over D times Time--'

_d/d(time)[½(experience2) + knowledge(experience)] = insight + knowledge_

Heero reads it twice, until it makes his head hurt. Twice is quite enough, and yet it lingers, frustration at not quite grasping something that seems important. Weariness. Distance travelled equals weariness. He'd come a long way, leaving so much behind, one more time.

He lays there realising Quatre is holding his hand, and that it feels good. He understands this much. He squeezes Quatre's fingers.

 

**

 

They go no farther on Sunday than the garden behind Quatre's apartment.

Clara joins them, well after noon. She looks like Quatre, but not; a stronger line in the eye, something more stubborn in the chin. Her forefinger has a yellow stain from nicotine, something Heero has never seen on a colonial. When she offers a slim silver case of hand-rolled cigarettes, Quatre takes one, so Heero does as well. Quatre lights his with his sister's matches, but leans over the chairs to Heero, to offer Heero the glowing butt of his own.

'You should take him to the bakery,' Clara tells her brother. 'It's the only place open on Sunday. Parisians die for baguettes,' she says to Heero, with a tragic eyeroll. 'I think it's the phallic thing.'

'He shouldn't walk, not on that ankle,' Quatre demurs. He smokes like an expert, exhaling through the nose, trailing careless whisps as he speaks. Heero coughs, and almost burns his fingers.

'We should picnic,' Clara decides. 'Something that Quatre can't ruin. Duck and wine and baguettes. Cheese. Have you had Parisian cheese, Heero?'

'There's no cheese actually made in Paris,' Quatre interrupts, with a tragic eyeroll of his own.

'Nonsense. Parisian _fromageries_ \--'

_'Tu es con. T'es serieux?'_

Heero never had siblings, and doesn't know if this banter is normal. They sit relaxed, mirrors of each other, Quatre with his knee crooked over the arm of his chair, Clara with freshly painted toenails drying in the sun. Clara blows a streak of smoke toward the sky, and smiles at him.

'Our mother was born in Paris,' she says suddenly. 'She used to tell me stories about the bridges, the lights at Christmas, the food. Once a year Father would buy her French macaroons, just for her. Quattie, I wish you could remember that. I wish you remembered her.'

Heero has seen Quatre in many circumstances. Never in one where his face has gone still, like it does now. Still, with the eyes fixed low. The ashy tip of his cigarette trembles and falls, unnoticed.

'How did she go to the Colonies?' Heero asks, dropping his voice into the silence like a pebble in a pond. 'If she was an Earther. Alliance stopped issuing travel visas decades ago.'

'Father paid,' Clara shrugs. 'Money opens doors. It even buys happiness, in small doses. The way she smiled when he'd surprise her with those macaroons.'

'Heero,' Quatre says, and finishes his cigarette with a final puff. 'You shouldn't ice for too long. Let me take that inside for you.'

Heero reaches, but Quatre beats him to it. The damp flannel wrapping the peas to his ankle is whisked away. 'Coffee?' Quatre asks, and is gone before he can answer.

Clara sighs. 'Damn,' she says, and puts her cigarette to her mouth in studied quiet. Heero lets his burn out without trying to inhale from it again.

They do picnic. Without Clara. She disappears late afternoon with a handsome young Frenchman, winking back to Heero that they shouldn't wait up for her. Heero is bemused by that, until Quatre tells him bluntly what she means. 'Oh,' Heero says, and concentrates then on sitting still while Quatre carries all their supplies up and down the stairs. But at last it's just them, spread over the same duvet they slept on the night before, and Quatre lays out all their meal on wax paper right on the grass. 'I think the swelling's easing,' Quatre observes, and pours him champagne in a tea cup.

'Thank you.' The pain is less, after a day spent doing nothing more strenuous than lounging out of doors. Over the garden fence he's watched neighbourhood passerby, old women in prim black coats and lace out for their shopping, young couples like Clara and her man, children on bicycles. Not many men. The men had fought the many wars, and many had died in them. It was the same in all the places Heero had been, the last few years.

'I didn't cook any of it,' Quatre murmurs. 'If that's why you're wary of eating it.'

'No. I know.' The duck-- there was duck, just as Clara had said-- and smoked oysters and chesnuts, salmon pâté-- had all come from packages, not Quatre's skillet. A feast for two. No plates, no forks, and so Heero mimicks Quatre, and eats with his fingers, licking up drips of truffle oil and brushing crumbs away to the dirt. Quatre smiles at him, that deep and slightly sad smile Quatre has always had. Heero returns it by clinking their cups.

'How is the Princess?' Quatre asks as they eat. 'You were with her last?'

'Guarded as well as she can be. I think Dekim Barton persuaded her to accept restrictions.'

'Poor thing.' Breeze drifts down through the tree branches overhead, like whispers all around them. 'She's a lovely girl,' Quatre says, as if that has great meaning. 'But you left Sanq?'

'The Cabinet finally granted Preventers authority to take over her protection detail.'

'That was a long time coming.' Quatre tears their baguette in half and passes a portion to Heero. 'You're not jealous?'

'Jealous? Why?'

'In Paris, _c'est un scandale_.' Quatre bites delicately at a duck leg. 'You might feel unfairly cast aside. Relena clearly preferred you. I heard only good things of what you did in Sanq. Even the Pacifists found no fault.'

Heero thinks of different things to say. 'There's no fault,' is what he finally settles on. 'My being there... sometimes it was more of a problem than her being unguarded.'

'How do you mean?' Quatre's champagne stops its journey mid-air. 'Targeting you?' He looks sharp at Heero's ankle. 'And coming too close for comfort. But Heero, that must mean-- just a day ago?'

'Almost two, now.'

'I don't like you to be hurt.' Relena often said the same. Quatre, though, only sounds resigned. 'You'll stay, then? In Paris?'

'For a while. If you don't mind the company.'

'The company pleases me very well indeed.' A tiny smirk turns up a dimple in Quatre's cheek. 'If you don't mind watching me be utterly useless. I'm not who I used to be.'

'No. I can see that.'

'Do you mind?' Quatre finally completes his sip. Full swallow. Several, so that when the teacup rests on the duvet again, it has only a golden swirl in the bottom.

'No,' he answers truthfully. 'You are who you are.'

'Maybe,' Quatre says, 'you're not who you used to be, either.'

'Maybe,' he says, because he's not sure, and he doesn't know what it would mean to be sure. But Quatre only nods, and their talk turns toward attractions in town, then, safely distant from anything personal.

 

**

 

'If you like,' Quatre says, turned away in profile, 'you can have the bed. I could sleep on the couch.'

'It's your bed,' Heero replies. There's a chocolate stain on the duvet now, from their dinner. He scrapes it with a fingernail. Quatre catches his hand.

'Only if you like,' he says. Heero does know what that means. But somehow he doesn't say so quickly enough, and Quatre goes quietly, shutting the door on his little blue bedroom, with only Heero inside it.

 

**

 

Heero has been in Paris for a week when Quatre is not there, one morning.

Clara stands in the little kitchenette, bare except for her underslip, her hair in curlers, her morning ash bin already bearing three butts. 'Oh, he's on his pilgrimage,' she shrugs. 'I forgot you haven't been through one yet. It feels like you've been here forever, you're so quiet. Like a little scowly mouse.'

Heero rubs his cheek where she pinches him. 'Pilgrimage?'

'Sit down, I made eggs. He didn't tell you anything?' She dishes him breakfast in a bowl and serves him with thick-grained coffee. 'He just goes, sometimes. He'll probably only be gone a few days. I'm sure he didn't mean to abandon you here. At least you're back on your feet.'

'Where does he go?' The eggs are good-- very good, after growing experience with Quatre's cooking. There are no broken shells, no shrivelled herbs. Heero eats with enthusiasm. 'In Paris?'

'I don't know, really.' Clara finishes her last cigarette and drinks her coffee instead. 'He was always a bit different from the rest of us. I suppose that's why I like him especially. It's a difficult thing, being brave enough to be different. It's hard to stop being different.' She touches her hair in several spots, and begins to pull out her curlers. 'I'll be late for work as ever. Darling, it would shock my bourgeoisie father to the bone. Timeliness is practically unmentionable in Paris.'

If he's going to be alone all day, he'll have to decide what to do. He feels vastly unprepared for this. 'Quatre will really be gone for days?'

'Oh, but there's ever so much to do, dear. Galleries and antiques and shopping and wine, museums, churches-- I know. Why don't you look for a little gift?'

'For you?' he asks, confused.

Her grin is amused, and she pats his cheek again. 'He'll be glad to know you were thinking of him,' she says, and carries her coffee back to the bath with her.

With none of its usual occupants the little apartment is quiet. Not silent. There are little creaks, tiny ticks, wind against the glass panes, the soft hum of the computer in the kitchen. Heero wanders room to room, exploring, touching. It's a worn little place, and small, not a grand mansion like properties he knows must fall under the Winner name. The yellow paint peels from the kitchen cabinets, but the mosaic tiles are smooth and perfectly laid. The window in the bath looks out over the garden, not the street, and if there's only just enough room for a person's knees on the toilet, at least none of them are tall. He doesn't invade Clara's room, but through the open door he gazes on overflowing bookshelves, curios and trinkets of a woman's private life. Relena had a shelf like this, in her private room. A dozen picture frames of dear ones. From the door he can see unsmiling blonds in dated clothes-- parents? The woman with short curls and sad eyes must surely be their mother. The straight-shouldered man who frowns away from the camera... looks nothing like them, really, and yet Heero knows without reason that it's their father.

Quatre's room yields no such secrets. No books, only an e-reader that takes no space at all, and has only a cookbook and a French news service in its contents. Nothing older than a year. In the closet, clothes that don't remind him of the Quatre who charged across continents in a Gundam. Denims. Cotton shirts, soft and worn. A watch, left behind on the night stand, with a scratch on its glass face and a broken strap. Heero spends the morning sewing it back together, stitching so small it will never break again. He checks the time against all the other clocks in the apartment, and returns it exactly where Quatre left it.

The whole city waits outside. He can hear it out there, steps of people passing, cars, a bustle and swagger of an entire population beyond the apartment. Tour Eiffel, Musee de Louvre and Musee d'Orsay; Sainte Chapelle and Notre Dame, Montmarte and Champs Elysees. But it doesn't call to him. He's seen grand things before, grand cities and art and treasures. He can't feel them, can't feel the humanity in them, the greatness that makes other people proud and awed. He doesn't want to.

He lays on Quatre's bed, and reads his walls.

 

**

 

Quatre's pilgrimage lasts five days.

Just as he was gone when Heero awoke, he's there again when Heero leaves the bedroom in the morning. Asleep on the couch, as if he'd never gone. There are dark smudges under his eyes.

'Shh,' Clara whispers, from the kitchen. 'He came creeping in last night. Toast?'

Heero feeds birds at the kitchen window with sesame seeds. Clara hums to herself as she braids her hair, every movement lazy. Saturday is a sleepy day in their neighbourhood. 'We should go to the market,' she tells him. 'You haven't been to the market yet. Do you eat _grenoille_?'

'Frog?' he ventures. 'Is it cooked?'

'Of course it's cooked, silly goose.'

Stocking feet on tiles are all the warning he has, but Heero tenses. It's only Quatre. Without a word he slides onto a stool at the table, and Clara pours equal measures coffee and liquor for him. Quatre scrapes wild hair from his eyes and drinks steadily.

'Where were you?' Heero says. He hears his own flat voice, and bites down on the rest of his questions. Quatre looks at him, and Heero looks at his birds.

'Giverny,' Quatre says.

'Monet again?' Clara refills his mug, coffee only this time. 'I thought you didn't like it there. Too many tourists.'

'Too many tourists.' Quatre coughs. 'No better this time.'

His sister gazes at him without comment for a long time. 'Heero and I are going to the market,' she says finally. 'You should shower. Pull yourself together.'

'Maybe I should stay.' Heero turns, but Quatre is already gone. Heero rubs his mouth, and can't decide if he's angry, or just hurt. Clara kisses his temple as she passes him by, and he can definitely identify that one. Pity.

His bag was small when he arrived, but he's used to living out of it. He changes into his last pair of clean trousers and socks, and uses his sleeping shirt to wash his face and torso out of the little basin opposite the bed. He's smoothing the wrinkles from his lone button-down when Quatre comes in behind him.

'Hullo,' Quatre says.

Heero almost turns, and decides not to. 'Hello.' He dries his chest on an edge of his tee, and tosses it to the hamper. 'I'm almost done.'

'Heero.' Quatre steps to his side, and sits on the edge of the bed, so close their knees touch. 'You're upset with me.'

Quatre's hair is wet. It drips in tangles down his neck. 'You weren't at Giverny,' Heero says to him.

Quatre licks his lips, but it's his hands Heero notices. The knuckles are raw. Heero takes him by the wrist, turning them to the sunlight.

'I gave up the money,' Quatre says abruptly. 'Last year. After Dekim Barton. I felt... I felt... I found I couldn't imagine the life I was born to. Not anymore. Even during the war, even when I rebelled against my father's law, it was all still in this-- bubble. Paris is just another bubble. A pretty one with pretty distractions. But it was my mother's birthplace and I keep thinking that if I can just... find something of her, here, then....'

'You don't need to explain.'

'I think I do.' Quatre sighs. 'I missed you. Please forgive me, Heero.'

'If you want me to, I will.' He sits, slowly. Quatre takes his hand. Heero laces their fingers together. 'You're unhappy.'

'No. Not really. Just finding my way. Finding a new way.' His lips quirk, not quite a smile, but it's there in his eyes, something going calm and glad and warm. 'Maybe finding you along the way. I did miss you. Heero--'

'Words,' Heero says, 'are really not as necessary as you think.' Quatre has just enough time to laugh before Heero kisses him.

The creaking of the bed probably gives them away, but Heero suspects Clara departed when neither of them emerged from the bedroom anyway.

 

**

 

'Heero.'

'Mm.' It's late. Very late. There's moonlight behind the curtains, casting a ghostly blue glow over everything. Quatre's pale hair on the pillow looks electric. Heero presses his nose to it.

'Heero.' Quatre's whisper against his cheek is followed by the tender application of warm lips. 'You wrote on my wall.'

Heero rubs his eyes until they stay open. Quatre's hand is extended to the wall, pointer finger resting there, in a spot where, indeed, fresh ink has appeared.

'Read it to me,' Quatre says.

'You can read it.'

'I know. But read it aloud to me.'

Heero pushes his elbow under him, rolling onto his side. He props his chin on Quatre's bony shoulder. _'Action,'_ he says, _'equals movement-- to the second power-- divided by change.'_

'So much more effort than result.'

'A lot of useless thrashing to get to the point.'

'Rubbish. Sometimes the thrashing is terribly fun. Heero. You wrote me a poem.'

Heero nips Quatre's skin, just to hear him squawk. 'Go to sleep.'

Quatre kisses him, deeply and fiercely. Heero smiles into the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> _Poems lifted from the excellent blog http://www.mathematicalpoetry.blogspot.com/._


End file.
